Writer's Guild

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More Points for User Reviews

In my opinion, it's a little strange that user reviews are worth the same number of points as simply commenting on a post. A well done review could take quite a bit of time, especially if you add in play time of the game. I feel it's worth more like ten points, as opposed to five. Just a thought. Yours?

I agree. Perhaps there could be a voting system based on how good or how bad someone's review is. When enough votes are made over a certain period of time, that would determine how many points the reviewer would receive. It would not only promote high quality reviews, but would also make the reviews much more interactive.

"Everything has a beginning and an end. Life is just a cycle of starts
and stops. There are ends we don't desire, but they're inevitable, we
have to face them. It's what being human is all about."

That's a good suggestion. I did think that maybe the reason user reviews were so lowly on the point scale was the concern about really terrible user review being rewarded too heavily. There are already some pretty terrible reviews floating around out there, and that's just unfortunate cause that's not how GI intended the site to be used: pumping out mindless, biased, and uneducated reviews.

The points idea is alright, but then we have to worry about like-minded fanboys voting up each other's reviews even though they stink. I'd say an even better solution would be having a subset of the community act as a sort of peer review group who looks at new reviews and rates them. Choosing the group would be the tricky part but I think that's just a matter of having people who want to do the job apply for it and provide links to reviews they've done. Then, it's pretty easy to see if they're biased or not. Also, the mere act of asking for people to apply for the position will weed out some folks who aren't serious about rating or don't have the time to devote to such a task.

Reviews certainly should be worth more than mere comments. The quality of a comment could also vary. Some post thoughtful ones, while others post drivel.

The whole review process and determining how many points that someone gets is too messy. Do the points change when a review changes? To fix that you need a duration limit or a cap on the number of reviewers. And the whole bias factor comes into. Then, you start trying to create this group. That brings about a whole other headache.

I would recommend, have it at ten points for all and then perhaps GI could feature certain quality reviews for more points or high ratings could grant an additional bonus.

GI was most likely going to take the most well written reviews, and feature them in the mag, as suggested by Pizawle. There is another topic about visiting headquarters. We could put these ideas together. Write an amazing review, win a tour to GI, along with 1000 GI online points. But for the time being, I think a point bump to 10 is the answer.

I just wish I could post user reviews, that option STILL isn't showing up for me for some reason even though I've fulfilled all the membership requirements. Between this and my blog posts magically disappearing I'm a little irked with the bugs still present in the site.

I definitely agree with your sentiments. Reviews can make or break a game, especially if the review is by someone the community knows isn't paid to do so. We're writing our observations of the game as we've played it.Perhaps we don't know the technical ins and outs of the titles we review but we do understand very well what it is we like and dislike about a particular game. Furthermore, allotting the same number of points for supplying a comment (irrespective of how fruitful that comment may be), removes the incentive for the community to review a game, which diminishes the overall value of the site over time. That's my opinion of it.

The only way that I would agree this is a valid suggestion is if the original guide author permitted editing and then approved the edits, and admittedly I'm unsure if this is already the case. The point though, is that if I edit a guide that you wrote, why should I be given more points when you did a bulk of the work? I shouldn't.

I understand that this site is new even in the grand scheme of sites developed from user driven content, but bearing in mind that the site is still a fledgling and the pre-established metric for contribution is already there the best it can be for the age of the site... what you can't really quantify is quality. With that said, ask yourself "How do I establish a point system that rewards quality without also encumbering the users who both contribute an addendum and original content in a fair manner?"

Your answer will take a long time to surface and be exploited no matter how you do it. Inaction seems to be the best measure for the time being, in my opinion. Let the system ride as it is and as the community evolves then so should the site. Trying to force the users to evolve at this stage will significantly decrease usability (again, my opinion).

I definitely agree with your sentiments. Reviews can make or break a game, especially if the review is by someone the community knows isn't paid to do so. We're writing our observations of the game as we've played it.Perhaps we don't know the technical ins and outs of the titles we review but we do understand very well what it is we like and dislike about a particular game. Furthermore, allotting the same number of points for supplying a comment (irrespective of how fruitful that comment may be), removes the incentive for the community to review a game, which diminishes the overall value of the site over time. That's my opinion of it.

My sentiments exactly. I was a bit...well, befuddled when I looked to the point scoring system to discover that.

Until I discovered why. A simple "10/10 This game is kewl!" or "0/10 This game is lame!" can qualify as a user review. So while myself and plenty of other members are putting forth effort in writing actual reviews for the user review section, they're being offset and almost diminished by swarms of "User Reviews" that are just brief comments.

There needs to be some sort of system that can quantify what is or isn't a review, awarding extra points to those that actually are reviews as opposed to "i like this game".